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We’ve been here before; you know – the beginning of the end.

On Friday, October 21, Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping says his revised call of the rapture will come true. This won’t happen, but we all act like we’re obligated to play along with the old kook. After all, we don’t want to hurt his feelings so close to his imminent death.

Camping has been wrong about this before. In a book titled “1994?” Camping predicts the second coming of fake Christ would take place on September 6, 1994. Needless to say, he was slightly off.

Then he envisioned May 21, 2011 would be our end times. It didn’t happen. Camping said his math was a little bit off.

Wait … math? He’s actually applied a formula to the nonexistent? Possibly. According to Wikipedia, Camping takes these factors into account before making his rapture predictions:

Jewish feast days in the Hebrew calendar, as described in the Old Testament,

the lunar month calendar (1 synodic month = 29.53059 days), and

A close approximation of the Gregorian calendar tropical year (365.24219 days, rounded to 365.2422).

Camping projects these into modern times and combines the results with other information in the Bible.

Setting back believers

Is this possible? After all, they’re already set back 3,500 years in their beliefs. But there is a further division between believers and doomsday prophets. Camping, among all non-believers and an overwhelming majority of believers, is usually dismissed with an eye roll when visualizing the rapture. He’s too literal for the mainstream religious population to take seriously. 99.9% of Christians do not take the Bible literally. Rather, they proof text the parts they feel are applicable to their life. (Would Jesus approve of this?)

Setting back atheism

Is this possible? After all, they already have all the arguments they need, right? Stories in the Bible are preposterous and have no basis of tangible truth. (I know. That’s why they call it faith.) But atheist activists have to be careful not to pick the low-hanging fruit. Campy Camping is an easy target with a fringe ideology. Focusing on a miniscule minority will only make atheism look like as big of hack as Camping.

Self-made ‘rapture’

Avoid buying excess amounts of bottled water this week. You won’t need it. Jesus isn’t coming back. He was never “here” in the first place. The closest thing you’ll find to Jesus today is a Mexican man. There will always be calls of “judgement day” from the unstable religious population. (Yes, there is a stable religious population.)

Truthfully, the only way the world will end is because we let it. Global warming will cook our planet. Oil companies will destroy the waters. Our actions will tank the ecosystem. Class warfare will kill off a segment of population due to poverty.

And we’re worried about Jesus coming back?

Maybe the “rapture” isn’t a quick decimation. Maybe we’re living it. Maybe it’s a long, arduous decay of what we took for granted.

They’re a bit archaic. … OK, they’re really archaic. The Catholic Bible’s 10 Commandments are a staple in front of many government centers, plazas (The Supreme Court is looking into this) and they even come in little wallet-size reminders for those times you forget that it’s not kosher to eye-fuck your neighbor’s wife.

The problem with the 10 Commandments is that they were conceived around 2070 BC when the big guy upstairs hooked up with Abram (Abraham) and wrote down all of their insecurities. They may have been useful for the people that didn’t actually exist the way God would like you to believe (or man would like you to believe.) But how useful are they in a world with Twitter and jello shots?

Let’s examine the flaws in the old 10 Commandments before writing the new ones for 2011.

1. I, the Lord, am your God. You shall not have other gods besides me.What a monotheistic prick. You want to be the only god? Fine. If the movie “Spiderman” taught me anything it’s that with great power comes great responsibility. Everything bad in this world is your fault, oh single-and-ready-to-mingle lord. Famine? Natural disasters? Infectious diseases? MTV? It’s all on you. If you want credit for everything, you have to accept the blame that comes along with the glory.

2. You shall not take the name of the Lord God in vain.Because “God damn it” isn’t in the lexicon of 95% of Americans. Please. We wear flip-flops. Does this mean we take your keen sense of style in vain, too? We have toga parties. Ready to condemn us to imaginary hell yet? We take your words in vain when we proof text the Bible to shit to justify our hateful and ridiculous actions. And we’re not sorry about it.

3. Remember to keep holy the Lord’s day.Of course we do! We all rest on the 7th day! Except for those in the food industry, retail, sports, civil service, medicine, journalism … To maintain your society, big guy, we can’t slack like you. Note: No one follows this. How often do you see someone stop a cop and say, “If you don’t go home and put on your pajamas the way God intended, right to hell with you!”

4. Honor your father and your mother.Do we really need the Bible to tell us to appreciate everything our folks have done for us? I wonder if God knows they take this a step further in the South. Not only do they honor their parents, they looooove them, too.

5. You shall not kill.Yes we shall. We do it every day. Ever hear of “Murderapolis?” They shoot people while wearing rosary beads! And America kills civilians in the Middle East all the time! And you kill people with your hurricanes, typhoons and tornadoes. Why do we need your narcissistic religion to tell us not to kill? How stupid are we?

6. You shall not commit adultery.But they can rape in the King James Bible. We need you, God, a dude that never gets laid, to tell us not to cheat on people? Have you ever heard of the show “Cheaters?” It’s horribly excellent television. And cheating scandals is what keeps celebrity magazines alive. (That and judging people by their body type.)

7. You shall not steal.But we can sure loot the hell out of stores when tragedy strikes. I hope the guys on Wall Street or in the medical insurance field are religious.

8. You shall not bear false witness.What does this even mean? Don’t lie in court? Gossiping? Narrow your focus, you toga-wearing hypocrite.

9. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.Spoken like a guy who has never lived next to Seal and his wife, Heidi Klum.

10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.Is this because he’s under water on his financing payments or because he’s Muslim? Because if you are the god of America, you can’t be a fan of Muslims. And that’s why you’re a jerk.